I took my daughter to a fairy-themed birthday party tonight that I thought was really cute. Keep in mind that my daughter is 2 and all the girls there were under 4. Some of the things they did might have to be adapted if you were doing this for older girls--although I think they would enjoy a lot of it, too--I did. :) Miss M didn't nap today (because I'm trying to get her to go to bed earlier and nap earlier) so she was pretty cranky, but mostly she had fun, too.
The hostess told us to have the girls wear tutus and fairy wings and that dinner would be provided for the kids. Pretty simple. I appreciated that. The party was held in their back yard, and when we arrived, they had different stations for the girls to go to:
WAND MAKING: They had a bunch of thin foot-long wooden dowels, silver pipe cleaners, a bunch of different colors of flow-y ribbon (2 strands for each wand) and a silvery wired ribbon (1 for each wand), a choice of colors in large foam butterflies, and then little sticky foam cut-outs and jewels.
BRACELET MAKING: They had the simple large plastic beads in a variety of colors and pre-cut strips of stretchy string. The girls could pick out their own colors and then the moms strung them and tied them.
FACE PAINTING: One of the other moms had a good-quality face-painting kit (the kind where the paint doesn't rub off every time your child so much as blinks) and she volunteered to paint fairy designs on the girls faces. It actually turned out REALLY cute and the girls loved it.
FINGERNAIL PAINTING: They had glittery fingernail polish in a couple of different colors. Only a few of the girls were interested in this at their ages, but I'm sure older girls would be all over the glittery nail polish.
After everyone seemed to be done making stuff, they were smart and brought out the food. Two-year-olds require food at regular intervals or tantrums are just around the corner--especially when they are over-stimulated. So out came the pizza and pink lemonade and danger was averted. Happiness abounds. :)
Next came a group photo. It is questionable whether it is a better idea to take pictures of kids right before or right after they eat when you're not going to get a chance to change their clothes in between. I think the choice to do it after food was a good one in the instance, just because the girls wanted to keep their costumes clean almost as much as the mom's wanted them to. And then they were happy because they had food in them. There was still some running off, and crying, but we ended up with a pretty good picture, I think.
Then there was bubbles. The hostess had this ingenious little bubble blower that was like a tube that you blew bubbles through. It looked a little like this one, but it wasn't shaped like a bee. It blew TONS of tiny little bubbles with one breath, and the girls thought it was great. I think one said it was like "fairy dust." And it was really cute to see them all running around trying to catch bubbles with their wands--a bunch of little fairies flitting all over the yard.
After that was cake and opening presents and more playing. I ended up going home after the present opening, just because Miss M was SO ready for bed by then. But I'm glad I went. Fun stuff for moms and their girls.
